Due to the NFL draft and NBA playoffs, tonight's Friday Night Fights will be live exclusively on ESPN3.com starting at 8pm EDT. The show will be replayed on ESPN2 on Sunday at 2pm EDT, but this isn't a marquee week anyway. We will have live coverage tonight and post-fight analysis following the show, then go over for live coverage of Solo Boxeo Tecate at 11:30 EDT in a separate post.
The main event tonight at the Cosmopolitan was supposed to be a junior welterweight bout between contenders Lamont Peterson and Victor Cayo. Actually, it was supposed to be Tim Coleman v. Victor Cayo at first, then Peterson decided to exercise his right to fight in an eliminator with the "sanctioning" body in question, so Coleman was out in favor of Peterson. Cayo then dropped out of the fight with an injury, and Coleman was offered his spot, but turned it down because the money wasn't really good enough (the money was not good at all) to fight Peterson, plus perhaps to be a thorn in Peterson's side due to the first switcheroo.
But either way, that fight is out. Coleman does fight tonight, though I'm not sure if it's on the broadcast or not. The replacement main event is a fight between Carlos Molina (17-4-2, 5 KO) and Allen Conyers (12-4, 9 KO). Conyers has some power but an iffy chin and isn't much of a boxer, while Molina proved good enough a month ago on Friday Night Fights to score an upset draw against Erislandy Lara after a nearly two-year layoff due to boxing political nonsense.
The contracted weight for Molina-Conyers was apparently 151 pounds. Conyers weighed in at 150 yesterday, with Molina at 152½. I don't know if Molina lost the weight (he had two hours) or what, but the fight is still on.
This is also the second fight at the new extravagant Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas, and if the venue becomes a major boxing player in the future, Molina will always be the answer to the trivia question, "Who main evented the first two fight cards at the Cosmopolitan?" Why, that would be "King" Carlos Molina.